When wearing a typical modern disposable absorbent article, a child may have dry skin even after one or more occurrences of urination. As a result, the child may feel little or no discomfort and often may not even be aware that he or she has urinated. However, having the child feel discomfort following urination in his or her “pants” may assist with learning and/or provide motivation to learn to voluntarily retain urine. It is possible to use cloth training pants that leave the skin wet and, due to their high breathability, promote evaporative cooling of the skin, further enhancing discomfort. However, cloth training pants have poor urine containment, often leading to wet clothing and wet surroundings, e.g., carpeting, furniture, etc.
Disposable absorbent training pants successfully address the need to prevent soiling of the wearer's clothing and surroundings. These products are particularly appealing to caregivers and are useful in the toilet training process because the pants have a very garment-like look. Children identify disposable absorbent article products with babies and often do not like being identified with or as babies. Consequently, children of toilet training age often do not want to wear baby disposable absorbent articles, and instead prefer to wear training pants that look like adult underwear. Thus, the switch from a traditional disposable absorbent article to more garment-like or underwear-like training pants can be an important step in the toilet training process.
Current training pants are typically limited to being pulled on like a pair of pants because the side seams are permanently bonded. However, in the context of toilet training, a product that can be opened and refastened at the side seams may be particularly useful because this capability permits the interior of the product to be easily inspected without having to pull the product downward. Thus, a caregiver can easily and quickly check for wetting while choosing either to describe to the child what he or she is doing in order to remind the child of the intention of toilet training or to check without interrupting the child's current activity. When choosing to involve the child and finding that the interior of the article is still dry, the caregiver can praise the child for not wetting the disposable absorbent article “like a baby” and instead behaving “like a big kid”. The caregiver can also invite the child to observe and/or to feel the interior of the article as a way of reinforcing the notion that a dry interior is desirable. In addition, if the article includes a feature that provides a wetness sensation upon urination and that is visibly highlighted in the interior of the article, the caregiver can point out the visible highlighting to the child when inspecting the interior in order to further reinforce the concept of toilet training. Thus, refastenable side seams may provide significant synergistic benefits in combination with other features related to the article's use in toilet training, particularly a wetness sensation feature and especially one that is visibly highlighted.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an article that can facilitate urinary toilet training by enhancing a wearer's awareness that urination has occurred by ensuring that the wearer feels an uncomfortable wetness sensation resulting from urination. It would also be desirable to visibly highlight the presence in the article of the feature that provides this wetness sensation to facilitate an opportunity for urinary toilet training. In addition, it would be desirable to provide a disposable absorbent article that provides the garment-like look of training pants and includes refastenable side seams to allow for easy inspection of the interior of the article without the necessity of pulling the article downward to gain access.